Apple scraps appointment-only policy for buying Apple Watch at stores

Though the company dropped the official requirement, there wasn’t much of one in the first place. As long as a store’s Apple Watch try-on areas are not all occupied people who arrived first, customers can simply as to try one without a delay.

If you want to keep track of the types of Apple Watches you try on, you can still share your email address and allow your preferences to be saved to your Apple Online Store wish list.

But now the watch is readily available in brick-and-mortar Apple Stores, and recently came to Best Buy. From this week forward, however, Apple Stores are speeding up the try-on process by dropping the appointment requirement. Customers no longer need to schedule an appointment in advance to try on the Apple Watch, which meant picking a specific store, time, and providing an Apple ID. In June, the Watch started being sold directly in Apple Stores, and now potential buyers can walk in and try one on at any time.

Apple has slowly been removing barriers to buying the device as stock levels rise.

Canalys added that, with more than four million sales under its belt, Apple “easily overtook Fitbit, Xiaomi and all the smartwatch vendors, despite the Apple Watch’s significantly higher pricing”. According to Apple, watchOS 2 “includes new watch faces, third-party app information as watch face complications and new communication capabilities in Mail, Friends and Digital Touch”. That has a number of advantages, including faster performance.